Moldy Buildings: Troubling Trend For Many Districts

A school in Portland, Maine, was closed forever last month. The
Romeo, Mich., district started the school year four days late. And
students from a high school in St. Charles, Ill., now are forced to
take their classes at a middle school.

Workers in protective
clothing clean up mold at Washington Elementary School in Romeo,
Mich., where the start of the school year was delayed so that
children could be assigned to other schools in the
district.
—Courtesy of WMI Environmental Services

The culprit in each case was mold, literally a growing problem in the
nation's schools.

At least a dozen schools recently have been closed for days or
weeks, and in three cases permanently, to fight mold. Lawsuits over
illnesses associated with mold—from asthma and shortness of
breath to loss of memory—have been filed by teachers. And
districts have had to pay cleanup costs totaling millions of
dollars.

Molds grow on virtually any substance when moisture and oxygen are
present, including ceiling tiles, carpets, wood, and paper. It spreads
by producing tiny spores, which float through the air continuously.

"Mold is ubiquitous. It's a major part of the biomass of the world,"
said Dr. Dorr G. Dearborn, a professor of pediatrics at Case Western
Reserve University's school of medicine in Cleveland.

Mold in schools is no accident, experts say. It's the legacy, they
explain, of cheap construction materials, poor ventilation, and sloppy
maintenance that allows leaks to go unchecked or be improperly
repaired.

"When budgets get tight, the last priority is maintenance, and
virtually all of these cases are related to water damage," said Dr.
Linda D. Stetzenbach, a research microbiologist at the University of
Nevada-Las Vegas.

Cases of mold in schools have been reported in at least 13
communities, including Clovis, Calif.; Nashville, Tenn.; Newton, Mass.;
Okmulgee, Okla.; Phoenix; and Shrewsbury, La.

The blackish-gray substance has been shown to impair breathing and
exacerbate allergies in some people. Teachers have raised
health-related complaints that include watery eyes, backaches, and sore
throats. More seriously, mold has been blamed for causing bronchitis
and memory loss.

Some molds, such as black mold or stachybotrys, are even known to
produce potent toxins. But medical research has not verified claims
that some types of mold cause memory loss or render students and adults
unable to work.

Still, so many schools have reported mold problems that a cottage
industry has arisen to clean them up. And one company that specializes
in removing mold plans to hold a conference next month on the problem
of mold in schools, built around a case study of mold in a high
school.

'Unhealthy Problem'

In the past few months alone, an increasing number of school
districts have grappled with how to detect and remove mold.

In Michigan's Romeo district, officials delayed the opening of the
school year this fall after mold was discovered covering the roof and
in roughly 20 classrooms at Washington Elementary School. Teachers had
complained of watery eyes, backaches, and bronchitis.

Soon, the whole district was paying the price for the cleanup.

The school's 540 students were transferred to three other schools in
the 5,200-student district, located in the Detroit suburbs. The
school's doors aren't expected to open for another two to five months,
said Kathy Wreford, the school board president. The cleanup is expected
to cost the district $200,000 to $300,000. And during the time the
school is closed, Principal Brian Winters will have to commute to three
different schools, which stretch over more than six miles.

In Maine's 8,000-student Portland district, Superintendent Mary Jo
O'Connor, on Aug. 15, closed Jack Elementary School permanently.
Airborne stachybotrys had been found there, and the school's principal
and a group of teachers had complained for 15 years about headaches and
inflamed asthma.

"We had a highly concerned staff who knew about the problem, and
when they heard about stachybotrys, I think it created an unhealthy
problem," Ms. O'Connor said.

Students from the school were moved from the site, which is
surrounded on three sides by water, to attend classes in two downtown
buildings. The district will spend $100,000 for every three months it
rents the rooms.

In West Carrollton, Ohio, three teachers at West Carrollton High
School have sued district officials for allegedly failing to prevent
mold-related illnesses the teachers say they have contracted. Toni
Craig, a longtime English teacher at the suburban Dayton school,
stopped teaching there in August of last year after complaining of
acute allergies, memory loss, and muscle cramps. The teachers filed
their $6 million lawsuit Aug. 27.

Paper-Based Materials

"When I got a metallic taste in my mouth from being in the room, and
three other teachers and students complained about problems, I don't
think it takes a rocket scientist to say something's wrong," Ms. Craig
said.

Rusty Clifford, the superintendent of the 4,100-student district,
did not address the teachers' specific complaints, but said district
officials "have been looking at this situation since we first heard
about it" in September 1999.

The school's roof was replaced over the summer at a cost of
$900,000, although Mr. Clifford said the work was unrelated to the mold
found at the school.

While school officials treat their problems in different ways,
health and medical officials agree on the many reasons why mold
prospers in schools.

Schools today are constructed of more soft, paper-based material
than those in years past, said Phil R. Morey, the director of
indoor-air quality at Air Quality Science Inc., a company based in
Atlanta that plans to hold an October conference on the problem of mold
in schools.

"Before World War II, schools had more plaster and less
biodegradable stuff. Modern production methods called for gypsum board
and paper-type insulation and plywood," he said. "These are less
expensive to transport than, say, oak or brick."

In addition to being built of more water- permeable materials,
schools are often poorly ventilated.

"In the '50s and '60s, buildings were often flat-roofed, and in the
'70s, the energy crisis frightened people into believing that schools
should not be ventilated," said Dr. Dearborn, the professor at Case
Western Reserve.

Dr. Stetzenbach, the medical researcher at the University of
Nevada-Las Vegas, added: "Classrooms today don't have windows open to
the outdoors. They are wholly dependent on air conditioning, so there
is not a lot of dilution in the air system. When I was in school, we
opened the windows."

As the problem has grown, businesses have sought to step into the
breach. One is Assured Indoor Air Quality of Dallas, whose co-founder
is a former schools superintendent in Texas.

Eli Douglas, now the consulting company's senior vice president,
said the firm has found mold in 250 to 300 schools since opening in
1993. "We had a pretty good idea this was a growth field when we
started," Mr. Douglas said.

The federal government has also gotten involved. The U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency last spring put on its Web site,
www.epa.gov, a 60-page booklet on how to prevent mold from growing in
schools and how to clean it up. Officials also expect to make printed
copies of the report available to schools.

Health Effects Debated

Despite the concern, researchers differ on mold's health
effects.

In the mid-1990s, Dr. Dearborn of Case Western Reserve published a
peer-reviewed article concluding that mold could be deadly, and was
responsible for the deaths of 16 infants in a poor neighborhood in east
Cleveland.

The federal government, though, has rejected that finding. In 1999,
a group of researchers convened by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention found that the study was insufficiently representative and
didn't prove causation, said Clive M. Brown, a medical epidemiologist
at the Atlanta-based federal agency.

Dr. Dearborn disagrees with that assessment, but concedes that
research on the toxic effects of mold is thin. Yet he and Dr. Brown
agree that mold impairs breathing and causes allergies. On the question
of whether mold can reduce memory or the ability to work, they say
existing research is insufficient.

"Certainly, there are some individuals who overreact," said Dr.
Stetzenbach of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, "but it's hard to
gauge because of lack of diagnostic tests. It's a growing field, and
we'll eventually find out."

'A Huge Error'

Sally A. Doyle wishes she had found out earlier about the havoc mold
can wreak.

One spring night last year, she reluctantly toured the boys' locker
room at Yuma High School in Arizona. A group of athletic coaches had
insisted that the school board member come and look at what had
happened to the room.

"The floor was just misted over, as slick as could be, and there
were textbooks that looked as if they had been dumped in water," Ms.
Doyle recalled.

She had never seen mold overrun a room at a school before. More than
a year later, she has seen it change an entire district: the
10,000-student Yuma Union High School District No. 70 in the state's
southwestern corner.

Last fall, Yuma High was closed and its 2,500 students were added to
the 2,200-student campus of nearby Cibola High School, an arrangement
requiring that classes begin at 7 a.m. and end at 8 p.m.

Last spring, Superintendent Allen R. Brown, saying that the issue
had become "very divisive," departed for a new job as the
superintendent of the Elko, Nev., schools. In the end, it took $5
million in state and district money to clean up the school. Despite the
ordeal, Ms. Doyle makes no excuses for what happened.

"We made a huge error. There's absolutely no doubt about it," she
said of the five-member school board, which she believes delayed
cleaning up the school. "We learned the lesson the hard way."

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